Why Banksy Deserves An Olympic Gold More Than Usain Bolt

The most iconic image of the Summer Olympics depicts a muscular javelin-thrower stepping back to hurl a missile. Despite the five-ring logo on his jersey, the image isn't exactly official. In fact, it would probably be whitewashed, if only London authorities could find it. The javelin-thrower is the work of Banksy, England's most notorious graffiti artist, painted on a wall somewhere in London and photographed on his website.

Usually the setting of Banksy's graffiti is brashly public. Most provocatively, he has painted the wall erected by Israeli security to blockade Palestinian territory – illicitly stenciling images of small girls frisking armed soldiers and of masked insurgents throwing bouquets – breaching military security to encourage reconciliation. Printed on posters, these images would make slick agitprop. Situating his graffiti on the blockade wall, risking his life in the process, Banksy makes his characters active participants in a tenuous peace process. Location is everything.

So it goes with his javelin-thrower. Several weeks before the Summer Games began, British Transport Police arrested four graffiti artists, releasing them on the condition that they stay away from the Olympics. Shortly after, a west London mural by a street artist called Mau Mau – depicting an obese Ronald McDonald bearing an Olympic torch branded with the Coca-Cola logo – was overpainted by order of the local government even though it was painted on a private warehouse with the owner's permission. By stenciling his javelin-thrower in a secret spot, Banksy made it all-but-impossible to obliterate. By releasing an image on the internet, where it could be freely replicated by the media, he made it ubiquitous, even more recognizable than the official Olympic mascot.

photo credit: Wikipedia/Zamanta

News reports claim that Banksy is keeping the location of his javelin-thrower secret because he's afraid it could be whitewashed by London police or envious rivals, or even that avaricious art collectors might somehow swipe it. That may be the case, but it misses the broader significance of his action. Through the endless replication of his image in mainstream media, Banksy has effectively hijacked the Olympics' identity. His icon provocatively questions whether the Games advance divisive nationalism rather than promoting the global unity evoked by the Olympic Committee's five interconnected rings. And he has communicated it by means befitting a multi-national corporation. The power of Banksy's javelin-thrower derives from the fact that it has become virtual, just like the Olympic emblem or Coca-Cola logo.

As an image, the javelin-thrower is no masterpiece. (Like most Banksy stencils, it's too straightforward to hold much visual interest.) Banksy's great artistic achievement – as always with him – is in his masterful manipulation of ideas. This work examines the Olympic message of peace-through-athletic-competition by taking up the media through which that message has been mindlessly publicized ad nauseum.

Between the years 1912 and 1952, the Olympics awarded medals for art. All the work concerned sports. In the first year, the sculptor Walter Winans won a gold for his statue of a trotting racehorse. Sixteen years later the painter Jean Jacoby won for his depiction of boys playing rugby. The work was generally awful, but the concept had some merit: If the Olympics are meant to bring nations together for the sake of universal understanding, perhaps the arts are more appropriate than athletic competition. With his javelin-thrower, Banksy has shown the Olympics' potential to bring international attention to subjects more substantive than the split-second difference between people sprinting across a racetrack. With the United Nations scarcely capable of reaching consensus against acts of genocide, the time has come to bring art back to the Olympics – and to give Banksy the gold.